Despite advances in cancer research, there are still no adequate treatments for many cancers. For example, malignant glioma is a devastating disease that arises in over 14,000 patients a year in the United States. Due to the ability of glioma cells to migrate several centimeters from the bulk tumor cavity, current standard of care only has marginal improvements, with a 5-year survival below 30%. Patients with glioblastoma exhibit systemic immune suppression resulting in deficient adaptive immune responses. These deficiencies' are due to the enriched immunosuppressive factors secreted by the tumor suppressing T cell proliferation and cytotoxic function. Immunosuppression plays an important role in tumor progression in patients with glioblastoma. If the immune suppression could be reversed allowing an effective immune targeting, then patients with glioma will have less tumor progression and improved outcomes.
Accordingly, new compositions and methods to treat cancer are needed. In particular, new compositions that reverse the immunologically suppressed microenvironment caused by tumors are needed.